Workflow

After some hard work, the workflow-ng API is ready.

It features

• actions, which may be configurable
• conditions, which may also be configurable
• support for multiple arguments, for actions as well as for conditions
• condition evaluation with logical operations like OR, AND and NOR
• events, for which conditions and actions can be configured. They may be contributed by modules.
• dynamic loading of needed arguments
• ordered conditions and actions - they are evaluated like they are ordered
• form API style configuration and processing of conditions and actions

So workflow-ng works event based. (And no, I'm not talking of calendars ;)
E.g. workflow-ng defines some basic events for drupal core, like 'node update, 'node insert', 'user update' and so on. So this are the events you can react on by defining conditions and actions for them.
What makes workflow-ng powerful is, is it's flexible handling of arguments. Each of these events has to define a list of available arguments. Then any conditions and actions, that can work with these arguments, can be configured for this event. So an action can be used in any situation, where the suitable arguments are available. There is no need for the action, to be coded aware of every event.. :)

As modules may define further events, this enables module authors, to easily allow site administrators to customize the behavior by just defining some further events.

Read more at http://more.zites.net/workflow-ng-api-ready

I really want to make use of the workflow module just released for 5.x but must have the capability of triggering a state change based on some simple field matching criteria.

On Cron Run:
* foreach (condition) { if (condition.true) { execute state change; break; } }

I noticed a small _cron() method that is already doing state transitions based on pure schedule. I guess my main question here is what is the best way to approach this? Is someone working on something similar that I could help out with? Should I just code it up and submit it to the group for review?

I'm happy to announce that I start working on the next generation workflow module, called workflow-ng.
It's inspired by the existing workflow module, but if things go well it's going to be a lot more powerful.

I can use the development as practical work for my study and I will also write my bachelor thesis about this - thanks to the Information & Software Engineering Group of the TU vienna. Furthermore it's great that this all is sponsored by the Austrian company Pro.Karriere!

So, what's workflow-ng?

Workflow-ng ist the next generation module package for building workflows with Drupal. It allows building configurable state machines, which can be supplied programmatically or through the admin interface. So workflow-ng will be a tool for module developers as well as for site admins.
Workflow-ng doesn't work only for content nodes, it will be coded on top of a “drupal entity” - so it will start with support for nodes, comments and users. Furthermore it doesn't urge you to introduce new states for your entities,because it does interpret each saved entity as a new possible state. This allows one to reuse existing information, e.g. reuse the existing „published“ and „moderated“ fields of nodes.
Also workflow-ng won't allow one building state-machines only. One will also be able to react on various “events” with configurable actions, which allows site-admins or modules to adapt any default behaviour. E.g. this suits very well for e-mail notifications. Send a thank you message to the author of a certain node type? Just configure the action and workflow-ng will do it for you.

Read more about it in the concept I wrote: link

Workflow is in beta for 5.x!

Well, crack open the champagne and put your party hats on. After hours of hard work by drewish, webchick, samo, moshe, bloomaniac, jvandyk, Egon Bianchet, unleached, mr. dale, bdragon, and myself, workflow is running on Drupal 5. Special thanks to all those listed above who took the time to patch, review, critique, and otherwise move the ball towards the endzone.

I've patched workflow-4.7.x-1.0 to add a "graph" action to the workflow settings page. This action generates a Graphviz DOT file representing the states as nodes and transitions as edges, with edge labels describing the roles performing the transitions. The function then invokes the Graphviz dot command to generate a PNG image of the graph. The function uses a PHP class that encapsulates the Graphviz generation, taken from the Mantis bug tracker (which is also GPL'd).

Some installation notes:

With much fanfare, we are happy to release the first 4.7 official package of the workflow module. Until now, workflow users were required to grab snapshots from a constantly changing version of workflow. With this release, you can be confident that your copy of workflow will be available for later download, testing, bug reporting, and bug fixing. Hopefully, this more solid foundation will provide a good launching pad as we ratchet up for the 5.0 workflow release (and beyond!).

Check it out on the workflow project page:

http://drupal.org/project/workflow